If you are dangerously close to losing faith in humanity, stop reading this article and go watch this video, because it doesn’t get much worse than what went down during Steaua Bucharest & Petrolul Ploiesti.
Steaua (pronounced St-ow, like you’re in pain, which is poetic in the worst way) was awarded a penalty in the 43rd minute, and during the pre-kick preparations three fans invaded the pitch. Security grabbed two of them, but before you go calling them heroes know that they didn’t just not catch the third guy, they didn’t even try. Thus was set off a chain of events that will make you want to go and watch that video I linked to a second ago.
The guy that made it through, Stefan Dragos Enache, casually jogged across the pitch and unleashed a flying punch on the unsuspecting George Galamaz of Steaua Bucharest. The punch not only broke Galamaz’ cheek bone, it might have left him permanently deaf in his right ear.
As you can see, things only escalated from there. Enache attempted to body slam another Steaua player in front of his entire team. The team then proceeded to lay a beat down on Enache, because that’s what you do when your friend gets sucker punched in the head.
Adding insult to injury, two Steaua players were then sent off after the dust settled for fighting standing up for their teammates. As the Guardian points out, it was technically the correct decision, but it was still a tone-deaf move by the referee to say the least.
Credit to Steaua’s Mihai Costea, who scored the penalty after all of that, with a chip, no less. But the Petrolul Ploiesti keeper who conceded it was struck by a flair thrown by a fan and suffered burns to his back when doing so. Yes, that actually happened. Then and only then did the referee delay, and subsequently end, the game.
And now for the worst part: there is heavy suspicion of collusion on the part of the referee, a Petrolul Ploiesti player, the security that didn’t do their job, and Eneche. As in there is suspicion that all of this was planned, a bunch of people were in on it, and it resulted in a player getting his face broke, leaving him deaf.
Steaua representatives claim Enache had a metal object in his hand, but dropped it after hitting Galamaz, and that the object was then smuggled off the pitch by the Petrolul defender Enes Sipovic, who walked over to his team's bench to have a drink of water shortly after the incident. Sipovic himself insists he merely picked up a lighter thrown from the crowd and handed that to club officials.
Steaua have also been critical of the stewards who, once Enache had broken past them, failed to react in any way. When they were asked by the Petrolul manager Valeriu Rachita, a former Steaua player, why they had done nothing, they replied that they had thought they were not allowed to enter the pitch.
The referee claimed after the game that he didn’t know how badly Galamaz was hurt. The president of the Romanian league has said there is no way that the controversial red cards will be rescinded.
Again from the Guardian:
[The President of the Romanian league] claimed to have spent most of Monday poring over the rulebook to find a way of letting them off and to have discovered nothing. The suspicion, though, is that his reluctance to help is related to a recent falling out with Steaua's controversial and broadly unsympathetic president Gigi Becali.
And here’s what Steaua’s head coach had to say after the game:
"It's impossible. I can't believe what I'm seeing. It was all premeditated. I can't believe it. Why did the referee send off my players? They only defended themselves and their honour. It's incredible!"
Incredible, in the worst possible way.
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